15 Facts About Pierre Loti

Pierre Loti gradually rose in his profession, attaining the rank of captain in 1906.

Pierre Loti was in the habit of claiming that he never read books, saying to the Academie francaise on the day of his introduction, "Loti ne sait pas lire", but testimony from friends proves otherwise, as does his library, much of which is preserved in his house in Rochefort.

Pierre Loti proceeded to the South Seas as part of his naval training, living in Papeete, Tahiti for two months in 1872, where he "went native".

Pierre Loti's narrator explains that the name Loti was bestowed on him by the natives, after his mispronunciation of "roti".

In 1882, Pierre Loti issued a collection of four shorter pieces, three stories and a travel piece, under the general title of Fleurs d'ennui.

Second, while serving in Tonkin as a naval officer aboard the ironclad Atalante, Pierre Loti published three articles in the newspaper Le Figaro in September and October 1883 about atrocities that occurred during the Battle of Thuan An, an attack by the French on the Vietnamese coastal defenses of Hue.

Pierre Loti was threatened with suspension from the service for this indiscretion, thus gaining wider public notoriety.

In 1890 Pierre Loti published Au Maroc, the record of a journey to Fez in company with a French embassy, and Le Roman d'un enfant, a somewhat fictionalized recollection of Pierre Loti's childhood that would greatly influence Marcel Proust.

Pierre Loti was aboard ship at the port of Algiers when news reached him of his election, on 21 May 1891, to the Academie francaise.

In 1899 and 1900 Pierre Loti visited British India, with the view of describing what he saw; the result appeared in 1903 in L'Inde.

Pierre Loti described what he saw there after the siege of Peking in Les Derniers Jours de Pekin.

In 1912 at the Century Theatre in New York City, Pierre Loti mounted a production of The Daughter of Heaven, a George Egerton adaptation of his French play La fille du ciel, commissioned in March 1903 by Sarah Bernhardt, written in collaboration with Judith Gautier and published in 1911.

Pierre Loti died in 1923 in Hendaye and was interred on the island of Oleron with a state funeral.

Pierre Loti was an inveterate collector and his marriage into wealth helped him support this habit.

At his best Pierre Loti was unquestionably the finest descriptive writer of the day.